


Bedtime Stories

by Strigimorphaes



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Female-Centric, Forced Marriage, Gen, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigimorphaes/pseuds/Strigimorphaes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And he set his enchantments about her so that she could not find her ways out, but drew ever nearer to his dwelling in the depths of the wood..."<br/>In the darkness of Nan Elmoth, Aredhel finds strength in history and myth. </p><p>Written for Legendarium Ladies April.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: History, Legend, Myth  
> Create a fanwork centered around a female character relating to the history, myths and legends of her time.
> 
> "Adar" means "father" in Sindarin.

When Aredhel lies awake in her bed at night, she sometimes feels as if all the edges that mark the end of her body and the start of the darkness around her have somehow become blurred. There are as many layers of blankets and quilts around her as there are layers of earth and rock above, and the heat sinks into her very bones. She seeks out Eöl’s body so that she can press up against his ever-cool skin. She looks into his eyes so she doesn’t have to look at the deep sea of shadows around their island-like bed. When he retreats into the world of dreams and visions and his eyes close or turn distant, she instead lets her gaze wander over the landscape of his body - the outcroppings of bones, the peaks of mountain ranges down his spine, veins like rivers. When is in the room with her, he becomes the world she always longed to see and conquer.

Occasionally that world is not enough and she gets strange wanderlust again. Eöl always knows. 

He’ll see her hands wringing, her eyes darting, and he’ll ask her if she is missing something. Aredhel can never name it, and it always ends the same way: he pulls her close, and there is no doubt in her mind that he loves her. That she has everything she needs. Sometimes she only pretends to rest, and she sees him waking while he doesn’t know he is being observed. The first thing he does is tracing his hand so reverently over her cheek, his look one of pure affection. In the dark of his eyes, there is comfort, and it is the same dark that surrounds Aredhel everywhere these days. Even outside, she can only wander in the night. The days, she spends below ground and behind walls. And often, she spends them in their bed, breathing shallowly, feeling loved and numb.

* * *

Maeglin is born in the spring, but the date is unknown to Aredhel. If she goes outside the stars and moon are only rarely glimpsed through the branches, giving her little in the way of a calendar. Eöl doesn’t feel like such a thing is necessary, anyway.

While their son is too small to speak Aredhel often sits with him on her lap, leaning against a pillow on the floor by Eöl’s forge. Eöl has not deemed a name for their son neccesary, either, but Aredhel likes to call him Lómion when no one is listening. And she likes to sit there, with the heat of the embers and the cold of the floor, and watch her husband as he works – not with the hammers, but with the smaller tools, with the melting metals and small details as he creates swords and armor and art. He makes her jewelry, sometimes, or small gifts for his son. Seeing him bent over the orange flames or glowing coals is the closest she expects she’ll ever come to seeing him in full sunlight.

 

One evening, he makes a necklace for her. He usually doesn’t use gemstones, preferring the metal itself or the varieties of new alloys he invents, but this time a dwarf has given him rubies. In that moment he reminds her of the noldor in all the smithies of Aman – they who more than any other people know how to work with precious gems. He crouches down beside her and their son and presses the cool metal into her hands.

In that moment, she freezes up.

A bright image of something far off, something in the past, Aman perhaps, cuts through the mists of her thoughts. Even though the image is only in her mind she feels as if she needs to give her eyes time to adjust lest they will burn from the light and splendor of it.

Eöl works and doesn’t notice the way his wife’s eyes water. She presses the child closer to her body.

Aman fades so quickly, soon replaced with the feeling of Eöl taking her hand and leading her to another room or the sound of his laughter as he plays with Lómion who still cannot say anything at all, who looks to his mute mother and asks her wordlessly to join them.

* * *

When the boy learns to speak, Eöl takes special interest in making sure the language will be flowing, beautiful Sindarin.

He listens to the boys enunciation, smiling at him when he gets a difficult word right. They sit around the fire, and Aredhel and Eöl speak just to let Maeglin hear the rhythm of the language. Aredhel thinks of Quenya, then. She can still recall the intonation of the words, the stress-patterns and the melody, even if a few words are missing, but just as she is about to open her mouth, Eöl rises from his seat and holds her in a gentle embrace. She buries her face in his black hair, breathes. When they part, she worries not about languages: she cares only for what words her husband's lips form. He leaves her and Lómion so that she can put their son to bed.

* * *

Eventually, Lómion becomes Maeglin. Aredhel accepts the name easily, in part because she wants her child have his father-name's _sharp glance_ insead of the mother-name's _twilight._

After an evening of quiet conversation, Maeglin lies in his bed surrounded by silk and stretching up his small arms for Aredhel. She sits beside him and takes one of his pale hands, tilting her head.

“What is it?” she asks him, her voice soft.

“Tell me a story.”

Aredhel looks down, thinking. She was never one for books or songs, although she remembers having read back in distant Gondolin as if in a dream. The tales she remembers are almost exhausted by now, and she was never much of a poet either. She tells the boy this, and that she’ll ask Eöl if he knows any good stories or can find them texts or songs when he travels out to meet the dwarves again.

“Are you sure you can’t make up something?” Maeglin asks.

Aredhel shakes her head. “Sorry. I don’t know a lot of stories,” she says, squeezing his hand. “When I was small I never thought I'd _need to_. I imagined that my mother would be there to tell all the tales. And that I’d always be running around, having adventures to tell my child about... But then I met your father, and now I don’t really feel like running around anymore, see? And my mother is… quite a ways away.” Not that she remembered much of where and how she had been when she had those thoughts.

“What was your mother like?”

Aredhel raises an eyebrow. “You’re a sneaky one,” she says, “You think there’s a story there, don’t you?”

Maeglin nods, pleased about himself.

“My mother is still alive. She is a very kind, wise person.”

“Where is she then?”

“She is in… in Aman.” Saying the word is like taking a deep breath. Without knowing why, Aredhel looks around the room as if to check if they are alone. But why should she care when there is nobody in Eöl’s house who would hurt her? She continues slowly, at Maeglin’s quiet insistence. “You don’t know what Aman is, do you?”

Maeglin shakes his head, but the word – or just the way Aredhel says it – makes him lean forward. “Tell me,” he whispers.

Aredhel fumbles for words. Some of the words are only in Quenya, half-way forgotten, while others just do not seem sufficient. She cannot make Aman a land - it remains a blur of images and emotions and memories.

“It is a very large place,” she begins, “Far beyond the ocean.”

“What is the ocean?”

And Aredhel laughs, and she does not know if she laughs at Maeglin or herself. She, too, knew nothing of the ocean before Maeglin asked her to remember it, and now the memories come unbidden with incredible force – waves, the cries of gulls, the scent of salt and sea. And she can talk about the ocean. It is an easier place to start.

“The ocean is incredible,” she begins, “As incredible as the coasts and the woods in all the other realms of Arda…”

In the end, she doesn’t even speak more of Aman that night. Instead she describes all the other places Maeglin has never seen: Mountain ranges to the north, sunlit fields, the horizion just after dawn. Hithlum and Gondolin and the coast, the silhouette of the hill of Himring against a red sky.

When he sleeps, Aredhel walks silently towards her own chambers. She hasn’t looked over her shoulder for years, but now she finds herself trying to hide by the edges of doorways, sneaking around as if commiting a crime. She reminds herself again and again that she is only finding some paper and a pen.

She is only writing by candlelight at the desk in her room. Eöl sleeps alone that night, but she doesn’t believe he holds it against her. 

* * *

During the day, she wraps the beginning of a book in cloth and hides it. As soon as she leaves her chambers and looks upon Eöl, walks with him, the thoughts she had written grow distant, as if mist decended upon her mind again.

Each night, however, Maeglin brings her wanderlust back.

“Tell me about the Valar again!”

And Aredhel tells him about Manwë’s eagles and Mandos’ kingdom, Lorien’s gardens and Varda’s stars. She can see in his eyes that they are nothing but bedtime stories, but she speaks just as much for herself as she does for him. After describing Valinor, she moves on the great houses of the elves.

“Finwë,” she explains, running her fingers through Maeglin’s dark hair, “Was a very wise, old elf. He had three sons, and the oldest and brightest was Feanor.”

“What was Feanor like?”

“He was a great smith. He made the most wonderful gems the world has ever seen,” she says, but her voice falters. How does one begin to explain swords and the silence after Aqualondë? Oaths and old wounds and the terrifying Helcaraxë all lie ready to assault her, and a boy of just a few winters couldn’t possibly understand. Yet she discovers at that moment that she'd rather remember than forget even this part of her story. “He made some bad choices too. It was because of him that many of us elves came to these lands in the east.” She pauses, wondering what more she might add to sate the child’s curiosity at least a little. “And he had a lot of sons.”

“Was he anything like Adar?”

Aredhel shakes her head softly, no longer looking at Maeglin. The tapestries on the wall become blurry swatches of colour when she doesn’t blink. “No,” she says. “Why?”

“Because Adar is a great smith too.”

“Yes.” Aredhel looks down at Maeglin again, shaking her head softly. “But he could never have made the Silmarils. And he has only one son.”

She dares to think that he will only ever _have_ one, that she wil not bear another of his kin. It feels more like a premonition than her own will.

* * *

One evening, as she lies with Eöl in their shared bed, she clenches her fists and draws a deep breath. Eöl notices how tense she is, reaching out for her. She gently takes his hand. Takes in the sight of him, imagines embers from the forge still glowing in his hands. Breathes.

“Eöl,” she begins. “I want to go out into the sunlight again. Out of the woods.”

“You’d leave me?” he asks, startled.

“Not forever. Just for a day or two. A little while, then I’d be back.”

“But what do you want there? The night is much more fair.” He looks into her eyes, and she cannot see if it is anger or hurt or something else entirely burning in his gaze. “True gems are found in the dark, dear. The stars only shine clearly in the night.”

“Perhaps, but still…”

“We can speak of it later,” Eöl says, turning to face the wall instead of Aredhel who knows from his tone that later might never come.

* * *

Maeglin grows older, and he doesn't need as many bedtime stories. The book has grown heavy, now, and it lies in wait in the back of her linen chest wrapped in a piece of cloth.

She busies herself with Maeglin and Eöl, but she dreams of eagles.

She forgets by morning.

She forgets so much.

* * *

Maeglin asks her where the book is.

For a moment, Aredhel doesn't know what he is talking about.

“What book?”

“The one you wrote,” he says. “The one about the past.”

Aredhel remembers faintly, something stirring within her. “Come,” she tells Maeglin, and she leads him to her chambers. He stands still as a pillar, watching as she withdraws the treasure from its hiding place, running her fingers down the lines of _tengwar_.

“How much of it was true?” Maeglin asks. “Did you ever lie?”

“Only lies of omission,” Aredhel says, smiling – “But people do that all the time.”

She sits on the floor with the book in her lap, and Maeglin joins her a moment later. “I can’t even remember half the Valar,” he confesses. “They sound so much like… like childish things.”

Aredhel laughs softly. She counts on her fingers with him – “Yavanna, Varda…”

“Nienna,” Maeglin adds. Childish pride no longer shows on his pale face, but Aredhel imagines she hears it in his voice all the same.

“Yes,” she says, “And also Estë, Vairë, Vána, Nessa…”

“Did you… Did you meet any of them? In Valinor, I mean.”

Aredhel opens her mouth and closes it again. The answer is hard to find, but when she does – oh, when she remembers the woods, the deer, the wind against her face as she wandered and ran –

“I knew Nessa well,” she says softly. “As well as one could, I suppose. She was flighty, but I met her twice on my own and saw her dance on the hills. And I've seen Varda, regal, a true queen headed to Taniquetil…”

“Do you not miss it?”

Aredhel has never parsed it into words, but now that Maeglin sits before her waiting to her it, she knows exactly what her answer is.

“Yes,” she says, and when she exhales, a shiver runs down her spine. “By Eru, I miss it." She almost turns her face away, because she does not want her child to see her in a moment of what might be weakness. "I want to see my people again - I want to see the world I lost." 

 _The world taken from you_ , a voice in her head says. It sounds like her mother's. She remembers her family tree, now, all its branches...

“Do you want to leave?” Maeglin looks… almost hurt. Aredhel knows how much she and her husband matter to their child who does not have the siblings, uncles, cousins or grandparents that she herself grew up with.

“Not forever,” she says softly, but her words cling more hollow now than they did when she said them to Eöl. “But I _do_ want to see my brother – or the cousins, the sons of Feanor, if you remember them from the stories.”

Maeglin has gripped the edges of his sleeves, and she wonders, as she often does, about what goes on behind his often so expressionless face.

“I want to go with you,” he says, “But I doubt Father would allow it.”

“So do I.”

They both fall silent.

Slowly, Maeglin opens his mouth again. “I want to go tonight.”

Aredhel feels herself turning tense. Eöl is home. She hasn't left the woods for so, so long – will she even find her way? What is it really there is outside worth seeking? Her thoughts seem endless, but she calms the maelstrom. “Not tonight,” she whispers. “But we will go.”

Maeglin takes her hand in a rare show of affection from his side. He squeezes it once before leaving her in her cold chamber.

Aredhel loses track of the time she spends sitting on the floor.

* * *

Aredhel opens the door to the room she shares with Eöl. He doesn't notice her, being turned towards the far wall staring at tapestries meant to make up for the lack of windows. She doesn't enter, doesn't want to linger in his presence for fear of whatever spell he has worked on her.

She opens the door to Maeglin’s rooms and sees him bent over his desk. Where he would usually be drawing up small schematics – nothing to rival his father’s work, merely to pass the time – he is instead writing, but she does not know what. He would usually be dreaming now.

* * *

Aredhel knows that Eöl will leave for the mountains of the dwarves in a few days.

She also knows that Maeglin will want to leave too, but in a different direction. She lets the idea take hold in her. Then she prepares herself, waiting until Eöl sleeps the night before his departure. She takes the book from its hiding place.

She reads.

She remembers.

She needs the images to fill her so that she has courage, and her fingertips trace over the Ladies of the Valar, over Indis and Irimë and all the bright women before her in her linage, and she dares not close the book she wrote for fear of never being able to open it again. She hears not her husband leave – the sound is drowned by the sound of waves and gulls in her head and the wind through Laurelin's leaves. She wakes only from this sea of memory when Maeglin asks her, as if she hadn't thought about it, as if it was his own novel idea -

“Lady, let us depart while there is time! What hope is there in this wood for you and me?”

Her answer comes swiftly as she rises and takes the cloth the book had been wrapped in: the old cloak, white but dusty, that she used to wear as she travelled. With that on her shoulders, she leaves the halls of Nan Emoth.

Even with an elf’s vision, it is difficult to navigate the dark halls that lead to the surface and the dark paths that lead through the winding woods. Maeglin's voice sounds fair here, but frail as well, deprived of the rocks that used to let it echo:

“Shall we not seek for Gondolin?”

The moon is waning, but the stars are out. A prayer to Varda whispered in Quenya leaves Aredhel’s lips.

“How far will we have to walk?” Maeglin asks.

“A few hours,” Aredhel answers. “Be swift.”

And she almost trips over a root, being too caught up in the smell of wet earth and the feeling of wind on her face. Her legs sing at the joy of walking and moving, and she smiles each time she narrowly avoids accident. If she cared, she would not be in any danger of walking into young trees or thorny bushes, but she does not care.

Nature can swallow her, the open air can take her, the sun – the sun will find her laughing.

“Can you even find your way?!” Maeglin asks.

Aredhel walks the animal paths, hands tracing the bark of trees, bare feet sinking into moss and grass. “I don’t remember much of the path,” she tells him, “But I am not afraid.”

“Mother,” Maeglin whispers, and she looks to where he points.

A single doe peeks out from behind silver-glowing bushes, large dark eyes meeting Aredhel’s. They both stand still. Slowly, the doe walks towards Aredhel. The breeze grows in strength, turns to wind. The leaves rustle around them. A few even fall, red and gold, and Aredhel realizes that it is autumn. 

The doe turns to leave, looking back at Aredhel. She follows he animal without questioning, watching it gleam slivery-white in the moonlight, always a few feed ahead of her and Maeglin. She lets the doe lead them to a hidden path, and she whispers to nobody in particular as she walks.

“I am not afraid.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Maeglin's lines at the end (about departing/Gondolin) are direct quotes from the Silmarillion so if they seem out of place, that's why.


End file.
